Speaker of the House Mike Johnson Claims Without Any Reliable Evidence that “Thousands upon Thousands” of Noncitizens Will Be Voting in Upcoming Elections

fraudulent fraud squad

Bullshit from the Playbook interview:

“We know that states are not requesting proof of citizenship and people check that box … so there’s going to be thousands upon thousands of non-citizens voting,” he said. “If you have enough non-citizens participating in some of these swing areas, you can change the outcome of the election in the majority.”

See Chapter 1 of my 2020 book, Election Meltdown, showing why, and how we know, that noncitizen voting is extremely rare.

Johnson also said this in the interview:

— On his role in certifying the 2024 election: “Look, I think I have shown that I am a rule-of-law person. I follow the Constitution and follow the laws, and we just pray and hope and pray that this is a non-controversial election, and that everything’s fair and square, and that I hope the margin is large for whomever wins so that there’s no questions for anybody.”

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“Voting Wars Open a New Front: Which Mail Ballots Should Count?”

absentee ballots, The Voting Wars

Michael Wines for the NYT:

As Pennsylvania voters begin casting perhaps two million-plus mail ballots, Democrats and Republicans are in furious legal combat over a once-overlooked aspect of voting remotely: which ballots are counted, which are rejected as defective and which ones voters are allowed to correct.

Simple math explains why. In the 2020 presidential contest, Pennsylvania election officials rejected more than 34,000 mail ballots. In a tight 2024 election in the most coveted swing state, even a fraction of that many rejections could spell the difference between victory and defeat — not just in the presidential race, but also in any number of others.

What’s true in Pennsylvania is true, to varying degrees, in other battleground states. Michigan rejected more than 20,000 mail ballots in 2020 and even more in 2022; Arizona turned down 7,700; Nevada 5,600; and Wisconsin about 3,000.

But those states have relatively hard and fast rules governing the counting of mail ballots. Pennsylvania is an outlier: It lets partisan election boards in 67 counties interpret many already murky laws on accepting mail ballots, and even lets them decide whether voters should be allowed to fix mistakes.

Pennsylvanians cast more than 6.9 million ballots in the 2020 presidential contest. Experts predict that about a third of ballots in this year’s general election — 2.3 million or so — will be cast by mail.

“It’s quite possible that the election will come down to Pennsylvania, and, if it does, it could be a couple thousand votes,” said Charles Stewart III, who leads the Election Data and Science Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It could come down to a recount where the two parties are arguing one ballot at a time.”

That underscores a downside to mail-in voting, which has become a standard in eight states and is increasingly common in most others. Filling out a ballot at home and dropping it in a mailbox or drop box is convenient, and may even increase turnout.

But it markedly raises the number of ballots that are rejected on technicalities, compared with votes cast in person at the polls.

About two-thirds of Pennsylvania counties have begun mail voting. But the legal war over those votes has long been raging on multiple fronts….

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“FBI arrests Afghan man who officials say planned Election Day attack in the US”

chicanery

AP:

The FBI has arrested an Afghan man who officials say was inspired by the Islamic State militant organization and was plotting an Election Day attack targeting large crowds in the U.S., the Justice Department said Tuesday.

Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, of Oklahoma City told investigators after his arrest Monday that he had planned his attack to coincide with Election Day next month and that he and a co-conspirator expected to die as martyrs, according to charging documents.

Tawhedi, who arrived in the U.S. in September 2021, had taken steps in recent weeks to advance his attack plans, including by ordering AK-47 rifles, liquidating his family’s assets and buying one-way tickets for his wife and child to travel home to Afghanistan, officials said.

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“Sixth Circuit Allows Enforcement of Ohio Law Barring Foreign Expenditures on Ballot Initiatives”

Uncategorized

Jonathan Adler at Volokh:

Today a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit granted the state of Ohio’s application of an emergency stay of a district court injunction barring enforcement of an Ohio law prohibiting foreign nationals from spending money to support or oppose a ballot initiative. The district court concluded that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in their challenge to the law. In OPAWL—Building AAPI Feminist Leadership v. Yost, a divided panel of the Sixth Circuit disagreed.

Judge Thapar wrote for the court, joined by Judge McKeague. Judge Davis dissented.

Writing for the panel, Judge Thapar rejected the plaintiffs’ arguments that the prohibition is overbroad and that it unconstitutionally restricts the First Amendment rights of lawful permanent residents. While lawful permanent residents have First Amendment rights, Judge Thapar explained, the state also has a compelling interest in preventing foreign money from distorting domestic self-government….,

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“Not everything will run perfectly on Election Day. Still, US elections are remarkably reliable”

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AP:

On Election Day, some voting lines will likely be long and some precincts may run out of ballots. An election office website could go down temporarily and ballot-counting machines will jam. Or people who help run elections might just act like the humans they are, forgetting their key to a local polling place so it has to open later than scheduled.

These kinds of glitches have occurred throughout the history of U.S. elections. Yet election workers across America have consistently pulled off presidential elections and accurately tallied the results — and there’s no reason to believe this year will be any different.

Elections are a foundation of democracy. They also are human exercises that, despite all the laws and rules governing how they should run, can sometimes appear to be messy. They’re conducted by election officials and volunteers in thousands of jurisdictions across the United States, from tiny townships to sprawling urban counties with more voters than some states have people.

It’s a uniquely American system that, despite its imperfections, reliably produces certified outcomes that stand up to scrutiny. That’s true even in an era of misinformation and hyperpartisanship.“Things will go wrong,” said Jen Easterly, the director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

None of these will mean the election is tainted or rigged or is being stolen. But Easterly said election offices need to be transparent about the hiccups so they can get ahead of misinformation and attempts to exploit routine problems as a way to undermine confidence in the election results.

“At the end of the day, we need to recognize things will go wrong. They always do,” Easterly said. “It will really come down to how state and local election officials communicate about those things going wrong.”…

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